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  • From decarbonization to electric cars, California hopes to showcase climate leadership at COP28

    From decarbonization to electric cars, California hopes to showcase climate leadership at COP28

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    World leaders are gearing up for COP28, an annual U.N. climate conference that will begin this week in Dubai, and California is expected to play a sizable role in the proceedings.

    Representatives from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration will attend and speak on the Golden State’s progress toward clean energy goals, zero-emission vehicles and nature-based solutions, officials said. California will also engage in continued diplomacy at the subnational level after Newsom’s recent trip to China, where he engaged in climate talks with local leaders.

    “Part of our presence in California is really to make the case that subnational governments — that is, states, provinces, cities — need to have a central role in this international collaboration to combat climate change,” Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary, told reporters Tuesday.

    Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.

    But some experts have soured slightly on the conference this year, noting that Dubai is one of the world’s leading oil producers and plays an outsize role in global fossil fuel emissions, the main driver of global warming. The conference is being chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., one of the largest oil companies in the world.

    In a year expected to be the hottest ever recorded due to climate change, holding the conference in the Dubai sends mixed signals, said Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA, who will be attending the proceedings.

    “This conference will be an especially challenging one for making real progress,” Horowitz said, not only because of Al Jaber’s role but also because this year’s agenda offers few opportunities for new breakthrough agreements such as the Paris climate agreement, which was established eight years ago at COP21.

    A car's hood is open, with a cord running from a pole to the engine.

    The electric car sharing program at Rancho San Pedro was created in September 2020 and has attracted 39 users. The program is backed by the Zero Emissions Mobility and Community Pilot Project Fund, which is launching four zero-emission mobility pilots around Los Angeles County this year.

    (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

    The Paris agreement seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and no higher than 2 degrees — a benchmark that was passed for the first time this month.

    “I doubt that this COP is going to radically change our approach to solving the problem, but hopefully it will add to incremental progress that allows us to see a way forward,” Horowitz said. “That’s deeply unsatisfying to me and to many others, but it’s a little hard to figure out how else one would go about tackling a problem of this size other than by bringing together the world’s leading experts, and the world’s most passionate advocates and policymakers, to create a space for change.”

    Indeed, California officials were emphatic that the state can get work done in Dubai. As one of the world’s largest economies, California is already a global leader in climate policy and has made great strides toward decarbonization, with the current goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.

    The state has also committed to transitioning to electric vehicles with a ban on new gas car sales slated to take effect in 2035. Currently, 27% of new vehicle sales in the state are zero-emission vehicles, up from 5% when Newsom took office.

    But more collaboration will be needed to reach greater goals, said Lauren Sanchez, Newsom’s senior climate advisor.

    “We could be net-zero tomorrow … but we would still need action from the world’s largest emitters, large countries and other nation states, in order to actually bend the curve of carbon emissions and keep Californians safe,” Sanchez said. “A big part of the diplomacy that we’ll be engaging in, as a subnational, is to share everything California has been working on and to continue learning from others.”

    Among the work California will be touting is its substantial investments in renewable energy. About 60% of the state’s power now comes from clean energy sources, said David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission. That includes a 2,000% increase in solar power over the last decade and a 3,500% increase in energy storage over the last four years, making California the largest and fastest-growing energy storage market in the world, he said.

    At COP28, the state plans to join the Global Offshore Wind Alliance, an international consortium that seeks to achieve 2,000 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2050, with 25 gigawatts coming from California, Hochschild said.

    But energy is just one of California’s offerings at COP28, formally called the 28th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The state is planning presentations on its healthy soils program and on nature-based climate solutions, including habitat restoration work and the “30 by 30” plan to conserve 30% of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030. For the first time, California will also send its tribal affairs secretary, Christina Snider-Ashtari, to the conference.

    “This is actually the first point in history where globally, national and subnational governments have recognized the importance of Indigenous voices in this space, understanding too that Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by the impacts of climate change,” Snider-Ashtari said.

    Horowitz, of UCLA, said other states and nations are listening and following California’s lead. She said she has been pleased by the state’s presence and authority at COP gatherings in the past.

    “California’s influence in global climate policymaking is real,” Horowitz said. “California continued to grow its economy as it shrank its greenhouse gas emissions, and in doing so, it serves as a model for the world that this is possible.”

    But the state also has lessons to learn at COP28 and will be launching an international climate partnership focused on reducing methane emissions. Methane is a short-lived greenhouse gas that lasts about a dozen years in the atmosphere but traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide.

    Three yellow school buses are parked behind two white, short, vertical structures with cords attached.

    Electric school buses sit idle because battery chargers are not yet functional at Lassen High School on Sept. 26, 2023, in Susanville, Calif.

    (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

    “We will be significantly expanding our collaborations in this space and really sharing information and strategies and understanding how data can help us tackle the problem of methane,” said Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board.

    The state will also launch an international climate partnership among subnational jurisdictions with similar Mediterranean climates and will participate in a local climate action summit.

    “We’ll be lifting up what we’re doing in California on wildfires, drought, floods, extreme heat, sea level rise, but also developing and announcing collaborations with other governments across the world that are working on these issues as well,” Crowfoot said.

    He added that he is looking forward to the results of a “global stocktake” that will occur in Dubai — an inventory of climate progress that he and other officials hoped will prompt countries to update their climate targets to be more ambitious.

    But even as California looks to serve as an international climate model, the state is also grappling with its role as an oil producer and consumer. Sanchez said the state will attend COP28 “with a lot of humility” as it works to transform how it produces and consumes energy.

    The United States too is not without reproach, as it continues to produce and consume more oil than any other nation. Just weeks ago, the Biden administration released the country’s Fifth National Climate Assessment, a sobering report that showed the nation and the world are far from meeting climate goals.

    President Biden’s landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, received considerable acclaim for its environmental plans and targets. But while international figures such as Pope Francis and King Charles III are slated to attend the conference in Dubai, Biden has opted to skip this year’s proceedings and send U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and other officials in his place.

    Despite the controversies surrounding this year’s COP, Horowitz said she is optimistic that the state and the nation can draw value from the event.

    “Often it’s states and cities and counties who are making nitty-gritty decisions about how to run their transit, and what to do with their waste, and what electricity supplies to purchase,” she said. “And it’s those kinds of decisions that really make a huge difference when aggregated globally, and that’s why cooperative efforts among local jurisdictions really matter.”

    In many cases, she added, it is the side conversation among states and provinces — as opposed to the high-level negotiations among countries — “where the real work of achieving climate emission reductions happens.”

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    Hayley Smith

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  • Speech is freer in California than in Florida, watchdog warns ahead of Newsom-DeSantis debate

    Speech is freer in California than in Florida, watchdog warns ahead of Newsom-DeSantis debate

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    WASHINGTON — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is due to debate California Gov. Gavin Newsom later this week about whose state offers a better model for the country, is leading an “assault on free expression in Florida” that is “almost without peer in recent U.S. history,” a watchdog warned in a pair of reports released Tuesday.

    Pen America, which defends the rights of authors and others around the world to write and speak out without fear of government reprisals, has written detailed reviews comparing the two states’ recent policies and proposals on campus speech codes, book bans, curriculum fights, diversity and inclusion, internet freedom and other 1st Amendment issues in the interstate feud between DeSantis, a Republican, and Newsom, a Democrat.

    The two men, whose states wield outsized influence on the right and left, are set to debate on Fox News Thursday night. DeSantis is hoping the debate jump-starts his flailing presidential campaign while Newsom has been trying to maintain his national stature amid speculation he will run in 2028.

    The Pen report finds fault with both states’ policies but reserves its harshest judgment for DeSantis, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination as a culture warrior on the slogan that Florida is the state “where woke goes to die.” The states’ policies have implications beyond their borders; most of the bills the report analyzed have been adopted in other states, and California is home to tech and entertainment industries with global reach.

    “Florida is setting an agenda of unprecedented censorship, rigging the system to favor the speech of those in power and silencing dissenting voices,” the Pen report states.

    Authors, journalists and others who care about free expression have to pay attention to both states, in part because of their governors’ ambitions and willingness to push barriers at a time when states are leading most of the big culture war fights, said Suzanne Nossel, Pen America’s chief executive, in an interview.

    “If you want to see where free speech is headed in this country, you have to take a close look at what they’re doing,” she said.

    The report details several bills that have been proposed or passed in the Florida Legislature in recent years, most of which were supported by DeSantis.

    They include the well-known bill that critics label “Don’t Say Gay,” which limits discussion of sexual orientation in classrooms, rules limiting the discussion of race in public colleges and universities, bills making it easier to ban books based on parental objections and those targeting mass protests with enhanced criminal penalties and drag shows.

    Some of the bills have been blocked by courts, but the report argues that they still represent a threat to free expression because they create an immediate chilling effect, could ultimately withstand court challenges and are already inspiring new laws and proposals in Florida and elsewhere that could accomplish the same goals.

    The drag show bill, which broadens the state’s obscenity law to apply to some live performances, was temporarily put on hold by a federal judge in central Florida this month after a restaurant sued.

    “Regardless of how the courts rule, the Act has already chilled LGBTQ+ expression in the state,” the Pen authors wrote, citing canceled pride events in southeast Florida and central Florida and the dissolution of a drag storytime chapter in Miami.

    DeSantis has accused critics of falsifying his record and creating “political theater,” insisting, for example, that he has expanded African American history requirements in Florida schools, even as the state placed limits on teaching about systemic racism. In the case of the drag show bill, he said it was targeted at “sexually explicit” performances.

    “People can do what they want with some of that, but to have minors there, I mean, you’ll have situations where you’ll have like an 8-year-old girl there, where you have these like really explicit shows, and that is just inappropriate,” he said at a May news conference.

    James Tager, research director of Pen America and co-author of the reports, said it was important to be “clear-eyed” and “send a warning signal” about Florida’s direction, given DeSantis’ political ambitions.

    “Florida holds itself as a blueprint for a more of free way of living, championing the rhetoric of liberty,” Tager said. “Several of their significant proposals, the primary effect is to degrade and winnow down free expression rights in the state.”

    Though Florida took the brunt of Pen’s criticism, California’s laws drew more limited scrutiny.

    The report credits California with “unambiguous wins for free expression” for passing laws to protect journalists covering protests and restricting the ability of courts to allow rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials.

    But it faults the state for what it labels well-intended misses, including a law that requires social media companies to produce regular reports on their content moderation to the state attorney general. The authors argue that the law, though ambiguous in defining the attorney general’s role, could give the government more power to regulate speech.

    The report also cautions that a law intended to protect children on social media and other online platforms could chill free speech because it “requires businesses to predict any content or practice that lawmakers could consider to be ‘harmful’” to children. Tech industry and publishing groups have also opposed the law as overly broad, warning it could hinder content intended for adults.

    Newsom said when he signed it that the state “will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation.”

    The report also criticizes the state for a policy approved last year by the Board of Governors of California’s community college system that would evaluate college professors, in part, on their commitment to teaching anti-racist ideas untended to foster “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The policy has drawn a lawsuit from a group of professors.

    “There is a difference between protecting a school’s or faculty member’s right to include DEI programming, and mandating that they do so, especially in higher education,” the authors wrote.

    The organization labels the policy a “gag order,” arguing that it limits a professor’s academic freedom by forcing them to adopt the college system’s viewpoint.

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    Noah Bierman

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  • Newsom releases attack ad on DeSantis and Florida’s abortion ban

    Newsom releases attack ad on DeSantis and Florida’s abortion ban

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    California Gov. Gavin Newsom released an ad Sunday attacking Florida’s six-week abortion ban as he and Gov. Ron DeSantis get set for a televised debate at the end of the month.

    The ad, called “Wanted,” lays the abortion restriction on DeSantis, who in April signed into law the “Heartbeat Protection Act” prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. DeSantis is also a Republican candidate for president.

    The ad was set to run in Florida and Washington, D.C., television markets on NFL Sunday Night Football, as well as on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on days leading up to the governors’ debate on Nov. 30. Hannity will moderate the 90-minute debate in Georgia, which will be broadcast on Fox News.

    In the ad, which looks like a wanted poster, Newsom intones: “By order of Gov. Ron DeSantis, any woman who has an abortion after six weeks and any doctor who gives her care will be guilty of a felony. Abortion after six weeks will be punishable by up to five years in prison. Even though many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks. That’s not freedom. That’s Ron DeSantis’ Florida.”

    The debate will come in the midst of a contentious Republican presidential contest, offering an odd sideshow in an already unusual political season dominated by former President Trump’s campaign to return to the White House while fighting criminal charges in Florida, New York, Washington, D.C., and Georgia.

    Newsom posted his ad on X, formerly known as Twitter, where DeSantis has posted a video criticizing California and promoting Florida.

    “Decline is a choice and success is attainable,” DeSantis said in a tweet accompanying the video. “As President, I will lead America’s revival. I look forward to the opportunity to debate Gavin Newsom over our very different visions for the future of our country.”

    DeSantis will also appear at the next Republican presidential primary debate on Dec. 6.

    Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

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    Roger Vincent

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  • 10 Freeway to reopen early — in time for Monday morning commute

    10 Freeway to reopen early — in time for Monday morning commute

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    Good news for Los Angeles commuters: A crucial tranche of the 10 Freeway south of downtown L.A. will open Sunday night and will be ready for the busy morning commute — a day earlier than previously expected and weeks ahead of original projections.

    “This thing opens tonight and will be fully operational tomorrow,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a Sunday morning news conference, where he was joined on the deck of the freeway by Mayor Karen Bass, Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “This is a significant and big day.”

    The mile-long section of freeway between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue has been closed for more than a week, since a massive pallet fire broke out below it Nov. 11. About 300,000 vehicles use the freeway corridor daily.

    Newsom and Bass stressed that it was the urgent action and collaboration of local, state and federal officials and construction crews that made it possible to get the freeway open so quickly. Repair crews have worked around the clock since the fire.

    “This is a great day in our city,” Bass said Sunday. “Let me thank everyone who worked 24 hours to make this effort happen.”

    The closure did not cause widespread gridlock across the city’s freeway system, but it has snarled traffic in parts of the city and created longer-than-normal commutes for hundreds of thousands of Angelenos. Preliminary data from transportation officials also suggest that the closure has prompted more Angelenos to take public transit, heeding calls from local officials.

    “Thanks to the heroic work of Caltrans and union construction crews and with help from our partners — from the Mayor’s office to the White House — the 10’s expedited repair is proof and a point of pride that here in California, we deliver,” Newsom said in an earlier statement.

    In the immediate aftermath of the fire, there had been fears that the damaged section of freeway might have to be demolished and replaced, potentially putting it out of commission for a far longer duration. But within days, it became clear that the impaired section could, in fact, be repaired, and Newsom announced Tuesday that the freeway would reopen in three to five weeks.

    An all-hands-on-deck scramble toward a more ambitious target paid off, with Newsom telling reporters last week that all lanes in both directions would be open to traffic by this coming Tuesday “at the latest.”

    The freeway will now be fully open to traffic by Monday morning — ahead of the holiday weekend.

    “To all Angelenos, I would just say this, tomorrow the commute is back on,” said Harris, who has a home in Brentwood. “Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.”

    The fire is being investigated as an arson. The California Office of the State Fire Marshal on Saturday released a photo and description of a “person of interest” in connection with the fire.

    Caltrans, the state transportation department that is part of Newsom’s administration, has long been aware of conditions under the freeway, where small businesses stored supplies including flammable wood pallets. Caltrans inspectors were on site as recently as Oct. 6, according to state officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land.

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    Julia Wick

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  • 10 Freeway to reopen by Tuesday, much earlier than originally thought

    10 Freeway to reopen by Tuesday, much earlier than originally thought

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that the fire-damaged 10 Freeway would reopen sooner than expected — Tuesday “at the latest.”

    “Five lanes in both directions,” Newsom said at a news conference Thursday evening at the site of the fire in downtown Los Angeles.

    More than 100 columns along the swath of the freeway were damaged — nine or 10 of them severely, officials said. Construction crews have erected wooden structures to shore up the overpass while the repair work gets underway.

    “By Tuesday next week, trucks, passenger vehicles in both directions will be moving again,” Newsom said. “We’ve doubled the crews, we’ve doubled down on our efforts here.”

    Newsom said 250 contractors were working on repairing the bridge, including 30 carpenters joining efforts in the most recent day.

    “Things continue to move favorably in our direction,” Newsom said. “The bridge structure itself seems to be in better shape than we anticipated.”

    Mayor Karen Bass thanked Los Angeles residents who had switched to public transit and heeded calls to avoid crowding surface streets while the 10 remained closed this past week.

    “This is a good day in Los Angeles,” Bass said.

    Gloria Roberts, appointed director of Caltrans District 7, thanked the governor and mayor for their leadership. She also praised Caltrans workers who had logged numerous hours at the site.

    “Proud to bleed orange,” she said, sparking chuckles and smiles from the governor and mayor.

    The fire, which arson investigators believe was intentionally set, started at a property under the 10 that was being leased from the California Department of Transportation. No arrests have been made, and the investigation remains ongoing.

    Although the exact cause of the fire has not been revealed, “there was [malicious] intent,” Newsom said at a news conference Monday afternoon. The cost of the repair project also remains under assessment.

    In addition to pallets, sanitizer accumulated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was stored under the overpass and helped fuel the flames, according to sources familiar with the probe who were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

    The fire was reported early Saturday, shortly after midnight, in the 1700 block of East 14th Street after a pallet yard under the freeway caught fire and spread to a second pallet yard, damaging the freeway overpass and destroying several vehicles, including a firetruck, authorities said.

    As part of its investigation, the Los Angeles Fire Department will inspect other underpasses in the city, according to Mayor Bass.

    “L.A. city wants to make sure our house is in order,” she said. “We have a number of leases under the freeway as well. So we are looking at those to make sure that what we’re doing is appropriate as well.”

    The Los Angeles Times reported that immigrant businesses had occupied the space beneath the freeway while their landlord dodged Caltrans, to which it owed thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. State officials, tenants and a lawyer for the company leasing the land maintain that Caltrans was long aware of conditions under the freeway that fueled the fire.

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    Jeremy Childs, Ruben Vives

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  • Fire under 10 Freeway in downtown L.A. upends traffic with no reopening in sight

    Fire under 10 Freeway in downtown L.A. upends traffic with no reopening in sight

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    The 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles will remain closed indefinitely as the California Department of Transportation moves to repair an overpass badly damaged by an intense fire early Saturday at two storage yards in an area with multiple homeless encampments.

    The incident, which closed westbound and eastbound lanes of the busy freeway between Alameda Street and Santa Fe Avenue, will significantly affect traffic in the area, officials said at anews conference Sunday, without offering a timetable for reopening.

    “Unfortunately, there is no reason to think that this is going to be over in a couple of days,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said. “We will need to come together and all cooperate until the freeway is rebuilt.”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Saturday to help expedite the work. Acknowledging “the anxiety of millions and millions that live in this region,” Newsom noted that 300,000 vehicles travel through the freeway corridor daily. And he said he knew the question many are asking: “When the hell is this going to get reopened?”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attend a news conference Sunday at Caltrans headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

    (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

    Several things must occur before construction can begin — starting with an investigation into the cause of the fire. It is expected to be finished by 6 a.m. Monday. Mitigation of hazardous materials also needs to be completed before a detailed structural analysis of the damaged portions of the freeway can commence. Engineers will be inspecting the freeway’s columns and bridge deck.

    “I am not going to understate the challenge here — it is significant,” California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishakin said. “This is not going to be an easy task for our structural engineers at Caltrans.”

    Commuters were encouraged to take alternate routes, avoid the area altogether or use public transit to help ease traffic flow through the downtown area as work on the freeway continues.

    This could be the most notable freeway closure in the Southland since the 1994 Northridge earthquake buckled portions of the 10 and other routes. The shutdown is expected to increase congestion on adjacent freeways where traffic is being diverted, among them the 5, 110 and 710.

    Los Angeles firefighters assess the fire damage to the 10 Freeway

    Los Angeles firefighters continue to assess the damage from a fire under the 10 Freeway near downtown Los Angeles.

    (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

    The faint scent of smoke hung in the air Sunday morning as Caltrans workers examined a stretch of the freeway near 14th Street. Black marks were visible on the overpass where the Los Angeles City Fire Department responded to a reported rubbish fire at 12:22 a.m. a day earlier. The department said its first responders arrived to find a storage yard with pallets, trailers and vehicles “well involved in fire.”

    Ultimately, firefighters from 26 companies and one helicopter responded to the scene; they were able to keep the blaze from spreading into nearby structures, though a firetruck was badly damage.

    Newsom said officials are investigating whether anyone was living under the overpass at the time of the fire, but at the moment there are no known deaths from the incident. Bass said some homeless people living nearby evacuated because of the fire and that at least 16 have since been housed.

    On X, the service formerly known as Twitter, users posted images that purportedly showed homeless encampments beneath the freeway at 14th Street. Newsom said that he and other officials cleaned up an encampment there in August 2022.

    “I am intimately familiar with this site,” he said.

    The incident could lead officials to study the safety of homeless encampments near freeways across the city. Peter Brown, a spokesman for L.A. City Councilman Kevin de León, whose district includes the site of the fire, said he believed the incident would “trigger a review” of such properties.

    “We just want to make sure folks are as safe as possible,” Brown said. “Nine freeways crisscross through [de León’s] district.”

    Since January, Brown said, the councilman’s office had conducted six “cleanup operations” of sites under the 10 Freeway that had moved 36 people into housing in the downtown area. Two of the visits were at the property where the fire occurred, he said.

    The area around the burn site is home to many homeless encampments. A man named Enrique who has been living in his car near the now-damaged overpass for most of the last year said that he woke up early Saturday to police shouting for people to clear the area.

    “They were big flames, higher than that building,” the 58-year-old said, pointing to a two-story structure on 14th Street.

    Behind Enrique, who declined to give his last name, there was a series of makeshift dwellings. A woman walked out of one and wandered the streets with no pants or underwear.

    Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin M. Crowley said that “as for any of the encampments in that area, we do not have any direct correlation at this point as to if that’s where it did start or didn’t.”

    “We are going to have to standby and wait for the active investigation to be completed,” she said.

    Homeless encampments have been the source of fires under and around freeways up and down the West Coast in recent years. In July 2022, a major blaze struck an encampment underneath the 880 Freeway in Oakland, destroying vehicles, snarling traffic and requiring the work of 60 firefighters to extinguish it. And in March, a fire in Tacoma, Wash., broke out in a tent beneath the 5 Freeway, leaving one person dead.

    The 14th Street property where the fire occurred Saturday is owned by Caltrans, a spokesman for the agency said. Newsom said that site had been leased to an entity he declined to name. But the lease is expired, the entity is in arrears and it has been cited by state investigators, Newsom said.

    He added that the state is in litigation with the lessee and believes it has been subleasing the space.

    Omishakin said it’s common practice across the country to lease space under freeways. “This is something that is going to be reevaluated from a safety standpoint,” he said, including what is allowed to be stored underneath overpasses.

    Southern California is no stranger to freeway closures. Far from it.

    Mudslides, wildfires and snow storms have routinely shut down portions of freeways, highways and state routes — but those closures often are quickly resolved. The 5 Freeway, for example, was briefly shut down along the Grapevine a dozen times from 2018 to 2022 due to snow, Caltrans said. Some natural disasters have caused notable problems: In 2018, Highway 23, which connects Pacific Coast Highway and the 101 Freeway, was closed for about six weeks starting in November after the Woolsey fire ripped through nearly 100,000 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains.

    Man-made fires have also taken their toll on Southern California’s freeways. In 2013, a tanker truck carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline crashed and caught fire, severely damaging a tunnel connecting the 5 and 2 freeways in Elysian Valley north of downtown. The conflagration burned through almost three inches of concrete and caused chunks of it to fall from the tunnel walls, necessitating a $16.5-million repair. The work wasn’t completed until January 2014.

    But the biggest disruption to the freeway system occurred after the magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck L.A. on Jan. 17, 1994, killing dozens and causing tens of billions of dollars of property damage. Parts of one highway and six freeways, among them the 5 and the 10, were closed after the temblor collapsed overpasses and buckled roadways, The Times reported.

    An accelerated construction effort — one spurred by round-the-clock work — led to reopenings ahead of schedule. In the case of the 10 Freeway, which saw two sections flattened by the quake, contractor C.C. Myers Inc. finished the project 74 days ahead of schedule, allowing it to reopen in April. The company had been offered a $200,000 bonus for every day the work was finished ahead of schedule, The Times reported.

    Bass invoked that push on Sunday.

    “For those of you that remember the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Caltrans worked around the clock to complete the emergency repairs to the freeways, and this structural damage calls for the same level of urgency and effort,” she said.

    Newsom said the state is now determining whether to offer contractors incentives to finish repair work quickly.

    “We are sober and mindful of the urgency to get this open,” Newsom said. “It is safety first, it’s speed second.”

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    Daniel Miller, Andrew Khouri

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  • Column: Newsom gets no California love for his political ambitions. Maybe he should try elsewhere

    Column: Newsom gets no California love for his political ambitions. Maybe he should try elsewhere

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    Bill Clinton was a man of large appetite and no small ambition when he served as Arkansas governor, a job he assumed at the age of 32.

    So it was hardly a surprise when, 14 years later, Clinton launched a bid for president.

    There was skepticism at the time and some carping of the too-big-for-his-britches variety. But that soon faded with the growing excitement of the 1992 election and the opening of Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters, as Skip Rutherford, an old confidant, recalled.

    Gavin Newsom can only sigh with envy.

    California’s governor is not running for president. Take him at his word.

    Filing deadlines have passed in the key early-voting states of Nevada and New Hampshire, and Newsom must know that a run against President Biden — his fellow Democrat — would almost surely fail, destroying Newsom’s political future in the process.

    Still, the gallivanting governor has acted very much like a presidential candidate, striding the global stage and trolling the GOP’s White House contestants whenever he has the chance. Maybe he’s positioning himself for a run after his term ends in January 2027.

    Either way, California voters are not pleased.

    A Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley poll released this week found Newsom’s approval rating sinking to the lowest point of his nearly five years in office, with 44% of respondents having a favorable view of his job performance and 49% disapproving.

    There may be several explanations; like barnacles on a ship, negatives tend to accumulate the longer a politician stays in office.

    Some on the left are disappointed with Newsom’s approach to the state’s homelessness and mental health crises. Some environmentalists are unhappy with the governor’s water policy. (Republicans never could stand Newsom.)

    But probably the biggest reason for voter discontent is the governor’s political wandering eye.

    “A lot of people don’t think California is doing well,” said Mark DiCamillo, who oversaw the poll for The Times and Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.

    “There’s homelessness and now the budget deficit,” DiCamillo went on. “There’s a lot of issues that need attention and they seem to be getting worse — or at least not better — and he’s off doing his own thing.”

    The ill will is nothing new. Govs. Jerry Brown and Pete Wilson both sagged in the polls when they stinted on their day job to run off and seek the presidency.

    Maybe it’s a California thing.

    Nationwide, two sitting governors have been elected president in the last 90-plus years: Clinton and Texas’ George W. Bush. Both ran with the blessing of the folks back home.

    Rutherford, who oversaw the planning of Clinton’s presidential library, said Arkansas voters were captivated as they watched “all the people who came in to work” for the campaign, “all the national press coming in and out,” and “it became a source of, ‘Wow, we got a guy who now has a shot to win this thing.’”

    Bush, whose father had been president, was coy even as he used his 1998 gubernatorial reelection campaign to position himself for a White House bid. He won his second term in a landslide and soon enough was traveling the country in pursuit of the presidency.

    Texans didn’t seem to mind.

    A November 1999 poll, conducted by the Scripps Howard news service, found 72% of those surveyed approved of Bush’s performance as governor. The state’s most powerful Democrat, Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, even endorsed Bush for president in 2000, burnishing the Republican’s bipartisan credentials in a way that’s unimaginable in today’s age of impermeable partisanship.

    “He was just a chatty, friendly character,” said Bruce Buchanan, a longtime Bush watcher and presidential scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. “Everybody who got close to him came away feeling that way, whether they happened to agree with his politics or not.”

    Maybe Californians aren’t all that excited about installing one of their own in the Oval Office.

    After yielding two presidents in the last half-century, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and two House speakers of recent vintage, Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy, perhaps national political celebrity isn’t what it used to be.

    Things may be different in Florida, which has never produced a president.

    Even though Ron DeSantis is struggling there — a recent poll put him a whopping 39 percentage points behind former President Trump in Florida’s Republican primary — voters haven’t necessarily soured on their governor, now in his second and final term.

    In a recent trial heat for the 2026 gubernatorial race, DeSantis’ wife, Casey, had more than twice the support of any other potential candidate tested, said Mike Binder, a political science professor and pollster at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

    “Clearly, the DeSantis name brand still has a lot of value to it,” Binder said.

    Maybe Newsom can ask Florida’s governor for pointers on running for president without alienating his home state when the two archrivals — one seeking the presidency, the other kinda-sorta but not really — debate at the end of the month.

    Either that or Newsom could start over someplace else like, say, Democratic-leaning Rhode Island. There has never been a president elected from the Ocean State.

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    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • New poll finds that California voters disapprove of Newsom’s performance as governor

    New poll finds that California voters disapprove of Newsom’s performance as governor

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    SACRAMENTO — 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s standing among California voters has hit an all-time low, with 49% disapproving of his performance as governor, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

    The survey showed Newsom’s popularity has tumbled this year as he continues to amplify his national profile and campaign outside of the Golden State to support President Biden and attack Republican governors and their conservative political agendas.

    Newsom’s approval rating was 44% in the late October poll, an 11-point slide from February when 55% of voters approved of his performance. His disapproval among California voters increased 10 percentage points from earlier this year.

    “He’s kind of taking on a new persona,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley poll and a longtime California pollster. “He’s no longer just the governor of California. He’s a spokesperson for the national party and basically voters are being asked to react to that.”

    Despite the negative perception of his leadership, the Berkeley poll offered a key upside for the Democratic governor: Voters overwhelmingly support Proposition 1, his $6.4-billion mental health bond on the March 2024 ballot.

    Only 15% of voters said they had heard about the proposal, which is estimated to generate enough funding for 10,000 new treatment beds across the state. After reading a description of the measure, 60% of likely voters backed the idea, 17% were opposed and 23% remained undecided. The survey questions did not mention that Newsom backs Proposition 1.

    DiCamillo noted that the initial support for the ballot measure was broad-based, though Republicans and conservatives were more divided.

    Newsom’s decline in popularity spans nearly every major voter category and includes significant drops among his Democratic base and voters who aren’t affiliated with either party, DiCamillo noted.

    Though Newsom still enjoys 66% approval from voters in his own party, his support from Democrats fell 16 points from February. Now a quarter of Democrats disapprove of his performance compared with 12% earlier this year. The poll found similar dips among moderate and liberal voters.

    The governor’s support from voters without a party preference declined from 49% to 37% approval over the same period.

    Nathan Click, a spokesperson for the governor, pointed to a separate poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California in late August and early September that found Newsom’s support to be much higher at 56% among likely voters overall. That PPIC poll was based on the opinions of likely voters. The Berkeley poll’s findings were among registered voters, a broader pool of Californians. Newsom’s approval among likely voters surveyed in the Berkeley poll was 48%, slightly higher than among registered voters.

    Though Newsom insists he is not interested in running for president, the governor has been raising money for Biden and Democratic candidates in other states and elevating his role in the culture wars with conservatives. Newsom also inserted himself into the presidential contest by setting up a debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican contender for president, in Georgia at the end of the month.

    DiCamillo said it’s not uncommon for governors to experience a decline in popularity if they campaign outside of the state.

    Former Gov. Jerry Brown received low marks as governor in April of 1980, the same month he ended his second presidential campaign. At the time, 38% of Californians approved of his performance and 61% disapproved.

    Voters offered mixed reviews of Newsom taking on an increasingly prominent role in national Democratic politics, with 45% approving and 43% disapproving. Half of the respondents approved of his recent trip to China to while 39% disapproved.

    When asked about his appointment of U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler to fill the late Dianne Feinstein’s seat in Congress, 37% approved, 30% disapproved, while 1 in 3 voters offered no opinion.

    “Fox News is going to feast on these numbers,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant, about Newsom’s ratings.

    Stutzman chalked up some of Newsom’s fall to coming down from a natural “sugar high” of largely positive public perception since his reelection last year.

    Newsom’s popularity as governor peaked in September 2020, shortly after his initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, putting him in such good graces with California voters that his approval rating was among the highest of any governor in the last 50 years at the same point in their first term.

    Voters’ opinion of Newsom plummeted months later, however, after a massive outbreak of a new variant and growing voter dissatisfaction with state restrictions. Newsom also had come under intense criticism in November 2020 for violating the spirit of his own public health guidelines by dining out with a group of friends at the posh French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley.

    Both Stutzman and DiCamillo said economic concerns in California and across the nation could account for some of the recent drop. Californians are also frustrated with the state of California, particularly about the issues of crime and homelessness, Stutzman said.

    The recent PPIC poll found that 55% of California adults think the state is going in the wrong direction. Jobs, the economy and inflation, and homelessness were cited as the top concerns among residents.

    “I think the real wake-up call is how dramatically Democrat voters seem to be shifting underneath him,” Stutzman said. “I’m not surprised his numbers are down. I’m surprised his numbers are down that far. He’s clearly upside down.”

    The new polling comes after the governor split with the progressive wing of his party on his solutions to California’s homelessness and mental health crisis. He roiled the far left when a provision was added to Proposition 1 that allows the funding to support mental health beds in locked facilities, which has become controversial in health care. His CARE Court plan approved in 2022 could force Californians struggling with mental illness and drug addiction into treatment as an alternative to jail, which similarly ran afoul of civil liberties organizations.

    He also ran afoul of environmentalists and some Democrats in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region earlier this year over his failed plan to streamline the construction of a controversial $16-billion tunnel to transport water south.

    Newsom terms out of office in 2026 and doesn’t have a reelection to worry about in California.

    But he has about a year left until he enters the lame-duck phase of his governorship, when a politician’s power decreases as his term nears an end. As his governorship begins to wind down, losing the backing of the public will affect his ability to get things done with the Legislature.

    “It affects his political capital, he’s not interested in expediting his lame duck status and he probably has a very difficult budget year ahead of him, which is not going to buoy his approval ratings,” Stutzman said.

    After closing a nearly $32-billion deficit in the state spending plan approved in June, the Newsom administration anticipates that California will still face an additional shortfall of at least $14.3 billion next year.

    The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 6,342 California registered voters, including a weighted sub-sample of 4,506 considered likely to take part in the March primary. The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish, Oct. 24-30. The results were weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks, so estimates of the margin of error may be imprecise; however, the results for the full sample have an estimated margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction. The estimated margin of error for the likely voter sub-sample is 2.5 points.

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    Taryn Luna

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  • Healthcare minimum wage expected to cost $4 billion in first year as California budget deficit looms

    Healthcare minimum wage expected to cost $4 billion in first year as California budget deficit looms

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    SACRAMENTO — 

    When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that set a first-in-the-nation minimum wage for healthcare workers, three words in a bill analysis foretold potential concerns about its cost: “Fiscal impact unknown.”

    Now, three weeks after Newsom signed SB 525 into law — giving medical employees at least $25 an hour, including support staff such as cleaners and security guards — his administration has an estimated price tag: $4 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year alone.

    Half of that will come directly from the state’s general fund, while the other half will be paid for by federal funds designated for providers of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, according to Newsom’s Department of Finance.

    SB 525 is one of the most expensive laws California has seen in years and comes as the state faces a $14-billion budget deficit that could grow larger, if revenue projections continue to fall short.

    The costly legislation — promoted by unions as a way to curb the healthcare worker shortage and in turn improve patient care — was signed into law even as Newsom has warned about the state’s shaky financial future, vetoing dozens of bills last month in the name of cost savings.

    “With our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty, it is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications, such as this measure,” Newsom said repeatedly in veto messages, rejecting some bills that had far lower cost projections than SB 525.

    Among the many proposals that Newsom vetoed citing financial concerns was a bill that would have required that colleges pay for diagnostic assessments for students with disabilities, which would have cost the state $5 million annually, and a bill that would have expanded cash assistance for aged, blind and disabled immigrants, which would have cost the state at least $100 million.

    Unknowns remain about implementation of the new wide-reaching minimum wage law, including the exact long-term costs, in part because of significant amendments made to the bill in the final days of the legislation session — a result of a rare truce between union and health-industry leaders deemed necessary to its passage.

    Newsom officials declined to give The Times a cost estimate reflecting those amendments when the governor signed the bill last month. But the amendments were expected to significantly soften the immediate financial impact to the state and hospitals, since gradual wage schedules were introduced in lieu of an instantaneous increase for all.

    Despite the unknowns, Democrats in the state Legislature — including some who were first hesitant about potential costs — were quick to pass the legislation after a deal was made between powerful interest groups.

    The bill originally aimed to increase the minimum wage to $25 per hour for all healthcare employees starting Jan. 1. The opposition estimated that would have cost up to $8 billion annually.

    While leaders of appropriations committees killed bills based on cost in September, rejecting measures that cost millions less than SB 525, the healthcare minimum wage bill cleared that key fiscal hurdle even as the Department of Finance opposed it, citing “significant economic impacts.”

    It’s unclear whether other state programs will be cut to make room for the wage hikes, but expect state lawmakers to rush to write bills when the Legislature returns in January to try to address some financial concerns.

    Unlike a law passed in 2016 that mandated a $15-per-hour minimum wage statewide, the healthcare worker bill does not currently include any mechanism that allows the state to delay wage hikes during economic downturns.

    “This is an important law to ensure California has a robust healthcare workforce. We’re working with legislative leadership and stakeholders on accompanying legislation to account for state budget conditions and revenues,” Newsom spokesperson Alex Stack said on Friday when asked about cost concerns surrounding the bill.

    The $4-billion estimate could change when the Legislative Analyst’s Office releases its annual fiscal outlook expected later this month. The cost is only expected to grow in the future, as more groups of workers become eligible for raises.

    The latest estimated cost to the state reflects pay raises expected to go to half a million healthcare workers who provide services to Medi-Cal patients, plus 26,000 employees at state-owned facilities.

    But the cost to the state could decrease if hospitals pay a bigger share of labor costs, said Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California, who was involved in shaping the policy. She pointed to billions already set aside for Medi-cal providers through revenue from a tax on managed healthcare organizations as one way to “help manage the impact of increased labor costs.”

    “SEIU California has committed to working with the administration and the Legislature to ensure safeguards are in place to guarantee that this critical measure is taken in a way that preserves California’s fiscal health, just as we did when negotiating the last statewide minimum wage increase,” Orr said. “This is how you make progress — through flexibility and compromise in achieving shared goals.”

    In a statement, David Simon, spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, which ultimately supported the bill, called the plan that Newsom signed a “better, more measured” approach to raising wages than past efforts, which the organization worried would hurt rural hospitals already struggling financially and potentially pass costs onto patients.

    Like Orr, Simon signaled more work to come.

    “As far as any future work related to this issue, we are committed to working with the Legislature and the governor to advance the joint goals of SB 525: investing in our state’s healthcare workforce and preserving access to healthcare,” Simon said.

    Under the law, workers at large healthcare facilities will earn $23 an hour starting in June, $24 an hour in 2025 and $25 in 2026. That applies to all staff, including launderers and hospital gift shop workers.

    Employees at independent rural hospitals and facilities that serve high rates of Medicare and Medi-Cal patients will see $18 an hour next year and won’t reach $25 an hour until 2033. Other smaller workplaces are required to pay employees $21 an hour next year, reaching $25 an hour in 2028.

    Newsom supporters see the legislation as bold national leadership amid labor unrest and worker strikes across industries, and as a more organized way to address local demands for $25 per hour already moving ahead in cities across California. His critics question if he approved it too soon without a concrete plan in order to gain political favor.

    Labor unions have long held outsize power in the California Legislature, but their wins this year were remarkable. Their influence in state politics is undeniable: the Service Employees International Union pumped nearly $4 million into eight independent expenditures alone to get their Democrats of choice elected to the Legislature this year.

    Michael Genest, founder of Capitol Matrix Consulting who served as a budget director for former Gov. Arnorld Schwarzenegger, pointed to union power — and pressure — as one reason why Newsom may have moved too soon.

    “This is no time to start adding really major costs to the state budget when it’s very possible we could go deeply in the wrong direction,” he said, noting the state’s economic uncertainty. “There’s always a reason to spend money, but some people care more about the reason than they do about what’s in the bank account.”

    H.D. Palmer, Newom’s Department of Finance spokesperson, has also acknowledged the state’s financial unknowns but was confident in the governor’s budgeting.

    “The governor is required under the state Constitution to present a balanced budget by Jan. 10 of next year, which he will do,” he said. “There are any number of actions that can be done to balance a budget. Obviously the major thing right now is: where are revenues going to go?”

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    Mackenzie Mays

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  • Newsom’s stumble on basketball court in China shows how photo ops can go wrong

    Newsom’s stumble on basketball court in China shows how photo ops can go wrong

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    BEIJING — 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s trip to China was many things: A test of his skill in climate diplomacy. An opportunity to burnish his political image on the world stage. A demonstration of the risks of the indulgent photo op.

    That danger played out during a visit to a school in Beijing on Friday where Newsom knocked a child down after stumbling while shooting hoops. They both fell to the ground and quickly sat up. Newsom patted the boy on the back several times before giving him a hug and asking if he was OK.

    It was a cringey moment for the Democratic governor but didn’t cause injuries. Newsom, in dress shoes, a white shirt and slacks, proceeded to play with the 9- and 10-year-old children for several more minutes, spinning the basketball on his fingertip and swishing a few times.

    Then the governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, stepped onto the court and took a few shots herself. The Newsoms handed out California-themed pins to the kids and moved on to visit a painting class and a school garden.

    The school visit was meant to highlight Siebel Newsom’s interest in farm-to-school programs. In California, she works to get more fresh food into school meals through partnerships with local farms. The visit to the Beijing school was one stop on a jam-packed agenda in which Newsom visited five cities in seven days and met with President Xi Jinping.

    Many of his events were formulaic meetings with government officials to discuss economic development and clean energy — important work toward his goal of advancing partnerships to thwart climate change, but not particularly photogenic. Other events were clearly designed as visual spectacles meant to enhance Newsom’s image as a leader.

    In one case, Newsom’s office sent out a picture of him standing on the Great Wall wearing aviator-style sunglasses and a pensive expression as he looks toward the sun. The glamour shot quickly set the internet aflame with memes of Newsom in the same pensive pose with various fake backdrops. Among them: the Oval Office and a homeless encampment.

    Newsom’s penchant for splashy photos emerged early in his political career when, as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, he and his then-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle posed for Harper’s Bazaar magazine. Newsom’s arms were wrapped around Guilfoyle as they lay on an opulent rug in the home of the wealthy Getty family. The image has endured over the years as a visual punchline for Newsom’s critics.

    A very different photo from Newsom’s days as mayor re-emerged this week while he was in China. The mayor of Shanghai began a meeting with Newsom by presenting him with a framed photo of his visit to Shanghai in the early 2000s. Newsom was in a schoolyard, shooting hoops with local students.

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    Laurel Rosenhall

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  • Newsom meets with President Xi Jinping in Beijing amid troubled U.S.-China ties

    Newsom meets with President Xi Jinping in Beijing amid troubled U.S.-China ties

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    BEIJING — 

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday as the U.S. grappled with rising tensions with the world’s second-largest economy and the Democratic governor worked to navigate a challenging diplomatic landscape on a trip meant to promote climate cooperation.

    The meeting at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing came as China’s top diplomat announced plans to visit to Washington on Thursday, and weeks before the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco where President Biden may meet with Xi — signals that both sides could make efforts to improve what’s become a frosty relationship.

    It was Newsom’s second meeting with a foreign government leader in less than a week after he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Friday — an extraordinary foray into international affairs for a governor who has no authority on global matters. Though he has repeatedly said he is not planning a run for president, Newsom’s sudden pivot to international diplomacy allows him to build experience that could help in a future run for higher office.

    In Beijing, where Chinese handlers tightly controlled media access, American reporters were not allowed into the meeting between Newsom and Xi.

    Talking with reporters afterwards, Newsom said he spoke with Xi about climate change, trade and tourism, and the fentanyl crisis that has gripped the United States, areas where he hopes the two nations can cooperate.

    On fentanyl, Newsom said the two men discussed so-called “precursor chemicals” that make their way through the black market from China to Mexico and then into the U.S. as deadly pills.

    “We talked about the importance of this issue and how it’s played an outsized role as the leading cause of death for 18-to-49-year-olds in the United States,” Newsom said. “It’s taking the life of one-plus person every single day in San Francisco.”

    He described fentanyl as an issue that “should scare every parent out there” because of how many young people are dying from taking pills that they don’t know contain the drug.

    “This is a big, big issue,” Newsom said.

    Before his talks with Xi, Newsom met with three other Chinese officials. American media were allowed to cover just a few minutes of each of those meetings as Newsom and the Chinese dignitaries made introductory remarks.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom shakes hands with Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, in Beijing on Wednesday.

    (Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)

    Newsom said he talked with them about issues including human rights abuses in Hong Kong, his desire to see a two-state solution in Israel and his hope that China will release David Lin, a California resident who has been detained in China for many years.

    “We hope David Lin comes back. We hope he’s released,” Newsom said. “He’s 67 years old, he’s a man of faith, and he’s being held. … On the basis of what I know, and with humility, but with what I know, he should be released.”

    Newsom said he sees discussions about cooperating to fight climate change as a way to open the door to broader alliances between nations, noting that “we all breathe the same air.”

    A tense geopolitical climate has loomed over Newsom’s voyage to promote cooperation on climate-friendly technologies such as electric vehicles and wind energy. Relations between the U.S. and China were already strained before this month’s eruption of war between Israel and Hamas presented a new potential wedge between the world’s two superpowers.

    China and Russia announced last week that they intend to work together to create an alliance that could attempt to counter U.S. support for Israel. The Pentagon reported recently that China is building up its nuclear weapons arsenal faster than previously projected and is likely studying Russia’s war in Ukraine to get a sense of how a conflict over Taiwan could play out. China immediately fired back that the report is false, and blasted the U.S. as the world’s “biggest disruptor of regional peace and stability,” citing America’s recent actions to help Israel and Ukraine.

    All that comes on top of disagreements between the U.S. and China over trade, human rights and the militarization of the South China Sea. In February, the U.S. shot down a Chinese balloon that flew over sensitive military installations. In August, Biden signed an executive order to block and regulate U.S. investments in Chinese tech companies.

    Newsom said he urged Xi to come to San Francisco for the APEC conference next month but said it was up to the Chinese president to announce if he will make the trip.

    Newsom is the first U.S. governor to visit China since 2019. His visit could help improve dynamics between the two nations, said Susan Shirk, a political scientist who is the founding chair of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego.

    “Right now the U.S. and China are in a downward spiral in their relationship. It’s really quite dangerous and we’re not going to prevent further deterioration of relations — or even the risk of war — unless our decision-makers talk to one another,” Shirk said.

    “So diplomacy is really important.”

    Newsom began the day in Beijing on Wednesday by signing a clean-energy agreement with the leader of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which oversees the country’s economic development plans. Then he met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is traveling to Washington this week to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

    It was Newsom’s meeting with Vice President Han Zheng that showed the personal dimension of political relationships built over time. Han recalled meeting Newsom almost 20 years ago when he was the mayor of Shanghai and Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco. As sister cities, San Francisco and Shanghai developed longstanding economic and cultural exchanges that Han called “a good example of China-U.S. subnational cooperation.”

    China-U.S. relations are “the most important bilateral relations in the world, and subnational cooperation [plays] an indispensable part to facilitate a sound and steady growth of China-U.S. relations,” he said through an interpreter.

    “National-level relations must also include the relations between states, between sectors of society and between the business communities. Only by doing this can we bring the relations back to the right channel of development.”

    Newsom paid tribute to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein in his remarks to the vice president, recalling her work to establish the sister-city relationship with Shanghai when she was San Francisco mayor in the 1980s:

    “I cannot impress upon you more how indelible her memory and her mentorship is in relationship to maintaining the relationship to China,” Newsom said. “It’s the foundation that was built that reminds me of how important it is to continue to advance this spirit that unites us here today.”

    Shirk at UC San Diego said it’s risky for American politicians to engage with Chinese officials. But, she said, it’s also beneficial.

    “China’s going to be there forever, even after Xi Jinping,” she said. “So it’s really good to maintain relations at the people-to-people level.”

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    Laurel Rosenhall

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  • After Israel visit, Newsom heads to China for climate talks. But can he avoid global conflicts?

    After Israel visit, Newsom heads to China for climate talks. But can he avoid global conflicts?

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    HONG KONG — 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom comforted a mother whose son was kidnapped by Hamas, and visited a hospital where Israelis were recovering from injuries from the Oct. 7 attacks. He met with top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and saw videos of beheadings.

    That was how Newsom described his one-day visit to Israel before arriving in Hong Kong to kick off a weeklong trip through China focused on climate change.

    “We went to show solidarity and support, to gain a deeper understanding and ultimately, to meet with these families, particularly connected to California, and notably the hostages, to see what we can do,” Newsom said during a brief conversation with reporters Monday in Hong Kong.

    The voyage marks a sudden leap into foreign affairs for the Democratic governor who insists he is not angling to run for president. It comes at an especially fraught time, with Israel and Hamas engaged in a war that appears poised to escalate and U.S.-China relations growing increasingly tense. While the international exposure could help burnish Newsom’s resume if he ever does run for president, he also faces political risks by stepping into global conflicts that are outside a governor’s authority.

    On Israel, Newsom has largely followed President Biden’s strong pro-Israel stance, visiting Tel Aviv days after Biden’s visit and echoing his outrage at the Hamas attacks that killed about 1,400 Israelis, took about 200 Israeli civilians hostage and prompted Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes that have pummeled the Gaza Strip for two weeks. The bombardment has killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, according the Hamas-led Health Authority in Gaza.

    Though polls show Americans broadly support Israel in the war with Hamas, opinion is more divided among several Democratic constituencies, including young voters, progressives and people of color. Newsom did not attempt to visit Gaza on his brief trip to Israel, citing the logistical challenges involved. He said California is sending medical aid to Gaza to help establish field hospitals, including wheelchairs, IVs, defibrillators and 50 beds.

    “We are working with an aid organization to get that into Gaza, separately and above from the aid we are providing for Israel,” Newsom said.

    Asked if he called for a cease-fire during his meetings with Israeli authorities, Newsom demurred, saying, “I have a limited scope.”

    In China, Newsom aims to keep his visit focused on areas where California and China can cooperate to fight climate change. His itinerary is filled with events meant to promote electric vehicles, offshore wind energy and other clean technologies. He’s scheduled to sign five compacts with regional governments, tour manufacturing sites and visit a wetlands preserve. In fostering climate-friendly partnerships with local officials, Newsom hopes to steer clear of a slew of international flashpoints.

    That could prove difficult.

    Tensions between the U.S. and China that have been rising for years may be further strained by the Israel-Hamas war. China and Russia announced last week that they intend to work together on creating an alliance that could attempt to counter U.S. support for Israel. While the U.S. and Europe consider Hamas a terrorist group, Beijing describes it as a “resistance movement.”

    “China and Russia have the same position on the Palestine question, and China is ready to maintain communication and coordination with Russia to promote de-escalation of the situation,” China’s special envoy to the Middle East said on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

    Meanwhile, a new report from the Pentagon says China is building up its nuclear weapons arsenal at a faster pace than previously projected and is likely studying Russia’s war in Ukraine to get a sense of how a conflict over self-governing Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, could play out.

    “China is… very belligerent, aggressive, expansive and cannot be ignored. And Gavin Newsom has to be mindful,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

    “I think it’s actually a good thing for a governor to try to keep some doors open to China. But you cannot go in just naively believing that you’re going to ignore which way the wind is blowing on global politics.”

    The geopolitical tensions are also playing out in California, where an Orange County family is asking Newsom and the U.S. government to help free David Lin, a Christian pastor held since 2006 whom the U.S. State Department considers wrongfully detained by China following his work for Christian churches.

    Lin’s daughter, Alice, said she hopes Newsom and other American officials will discuss the plight of wrongfully detained Americans. She urged the governor to raise the issue of her father’s imprisonment as well as that of Kai Li, a Long Island resident sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges, and Mark Swidan, a Texas businessman detained for over a decade.

    “Any officials who are meeting with Chinese counterparts should raise the names of our loved ones at every opportunity,” Alice Lin said in an interview with The Times.

    She said her father is a man of “incredible faith” and doesn’t like to talk much about his health with his family during the brief phone calls they’re allowed. But she knows he’s getting frail. She said he’s lost six teeth recently, which she pins on malnutrition.

    “The last time we saw him, he was already very, very thin,” she said.

    That was roughly 13 years ago. She said when her father was first imprisoned, she and her brother would take turns visiting him every year. But after flying to Beijing in 2010, she said her visit was arbitrarily canceled. Nobody would tell her why.

    She hasn’t seen him since.

    Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) has been working to secure Lin’s release, said her spokesperson Peter Opitz. The congresswoman “supports Gov. Newsom doing what he can to bring David home to his family,” Opitz said.

    Human rights activists are concerned that California’s work to collaborate with China on environmental issues brushes aside China’s human rights abuses of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, a region rich in lithium and other minerals essential to developing batteries for electric vehicles. A United Nations report says China’s treatment of Uyghurs “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity” and the United States has banned imports from the Xinjiang region due to concerns of forced labor.

    Yet a Washington Post investigation last month found that Tesla is among many electric vehicle makers that have suppliers with connections in Xinjiang. Newsom is scheduled to visit a massive Tesla factory in Shanghai later this week.

    Maya Wang, Asia associate director of Human Rights Watch, criticized Newsom’s plans to focus on environmental issues in China while leaving thorny human rights issues to federal authorities.

    “This framing that it’s either climate or human rights is dangerous, counterproductive, and also inconsistent with his own policies in California,” Wang said in an interview with The Times.

    “It’s disappointing, and we expect better and we hope to see better.”

    Newsom’s trip is paid for by the California State Protocol Foundation, which is supported by donors. Public disclosures show that he has given more than $3 million to the protocol foundation from his inaugural committees since 2019.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom tours the campus of the University of Hong Kong with school president Xiang Zhang on Monday.

    (Elex Michaelson / Fox11)

    His first official meeting of the China trip was Monday at the University of Hong Kong, where he spoke to a lecture hall full of students and faculty about California’s work to fight climate change by transitioning to the use of clean energy.

    “This is the greatest economic opportunity of our lifetime,” Newsom said.

    As he walked through the campus, Newsom passed a sign hanging above a large empty bulletin board: “Democracy Wall” it said in English and Chinese. The board was once covered with students’ political posters, according to several media reports, but they were removed during the massive protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019 as China’s communist government clamped down on pro-democracy activists.

    The university has faced criticism for working to squelch dissenting views by students engaged in activism against China. The massive pro-democracy demonstrations eventually ended with the exile or arrest of more than 100 activists, the shuttering of independent media outlets, and the dissolution of pro-democracy labor unions.

    Newsom did not mention Hong Kong’s democracy movement during his public remarks at the university. His aides said the campus was chosen as the governor’s first stop because it is a premier research university akin to UC Berkeley.

    The uprising in Hong Kong marks yet another big change from the last time a California governor visited China. Though Newsom is the third consecutive California governor to travel to China in search of climate-friendly partnerships with businesses and local governments, the U.S. relationship with China is “radically different” now compared with when former Gov. Jerry Brown visited in 2013 and 2017, said Schell of the Asia Society.

    China has a tendency to use “well-meaning earnest interactions” by American officials to advance its own agenda, Schell said, which could be damaging to Newsom.

    “Gov. Newsom is going to have to be extremely careful that what he does in the world of climate change, energy and these kinds of actually very constructive places where we do need to interact with China, don’t run at cross purposes with Washington,” Schell said.

    “I think he can do this and he’s really smart and able, but I think it’s going to be a slalom course.”

    Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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    Laurel Rosenhall

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  • Column: Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger and Brown, Newsom uses veto pen to rein in spending by California lawmakers

    Column: Like Reagan, Schwarzenegger and Brown, Newsom uses veto pen to rein in spending by California lawmakers

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    SACRAMENTO — 

    It’s the job of a governor to play adult supervisor and not give adolescent state legislators all the spending money they’d like. Otherwise, they’d break the family bank.

    All modern California governors have performed this role, often in different ways and frequently with relish.

    Many, especially Republicans, have loved to use their “blue pencil,” striking individual spending items from the annual state budget before signing it. That’s a potent power California governors enjoy that U.S. presidents don’t even have.

    Gov. Ronald Reagan cherished the “line item veto” and often lamented not possessing the tool as president.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, hardly ever picks up his blue pencil. He barely touches a spending plan before signing what he’s sent by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. That’s because he and legislative leaders already have negotiated the final version of the budget before lawmakers pass it.

    Then what Newsom does to slow spending by lawmakers is to emulate his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown. He vetoes lots of spending bills that legislators pass after the budget is enacted.

    It’s in legislators’ DNA to try to squeeze more dollars out of the state kitty after there’s already a spending plan in place for the year.

    “They’re always asking for more,” Brown once said. “There’s no natural limit. There’s no predator for this species of budgetary activity except the governor.”

    Lawmakers — Democrats, anyway — counter that it’s their constitutional right to keep dipping into the pot.

    “Many of my colleagues have important issues they’re trying to tackle on behalf of their constituents and they have costs,” Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) told me. “Just as the governor has the right to veto bills, it is the Legislature’s right to send him bills as part of our democratic process.”

    But Newsom’s admonition to legislators — implanted in veto messages on dozens of spending bills he recently rejected — is that if they want to tap into the state vault, they’d better follow a protocol. They need to seek approval through the annual budget process that’s supposed to end on June 30.

    Otherwise, spending veers out of control.

    This was Newsom’s basic boilerplate lecture that he tucked into spending vetoes:

    “We enacted a budget that closed a shortfall of more than $30 billion through balanced solutions that avoided deep program cuts…

    “This year, however, the Legislature sent me bills outside of this budget process that, if all enacted, would add nearly $19 billion of unaccounted costs in the budget…

    “With our state facing continuing economic risks and revenue uncertainty, it is important to remain disciplined.”

    It was a strong message. But a little humor now and then wouldn’t have hurt. Previous governors showed some occasional wit in their bill signing or veto messages.

    In inking a bill to legalize the stuffing and display of dead mountain lions, Brown wrote: “This presumably important bill earned overwhelming support by both Republicans and Democrats. If only that same energetic bipartisan spirit could be applied to creating clean energy jobs and ending tax laws that send jobs out of state.”

    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used a vulgar acrostic to veto a bill by an assemblyman who had heckled the Republican governor when he crashed a Democratic fundraiser. The second line of the message began with the letter “F” and lines six through eight started with the letters “y,” “o” and “u.”

    Gov. Pete Wilson enjoyed vetoing a bill that called for a state study of how best to dispose of discarded fluorescent light tubes. “Question: How many new legislative bills does it take to study the disposal of light bulbs?” Wilson wrote. “Answer: One less than you think.”

    Newsom recently signed 890 bills and vetoed 156 — a mediocre veto rate of 15%.

    In 2008, Schwarzenegger vetoed a record 35% of the bills lawmakers sent him, calling it collateral damage for them being 85 days late passing a budget. That was when budgets required a two-thirds legislative vote. In 2011, it was lowered to a simple majority.

    That year, tightwad Brown vetoed the entire budget. He complained it added billions of dollars in new debt to already red ink spending. It’s the only time an entire spending plan has been vetoed.

    Regardless of Newsom’s tough veto message — and his restriction on when spending can be approved — he’s hardly a piker.

    In his less than five years as governor, state spending has jumped by 53% — more than $100 billion, from the $203-billion budget Brown left him to $311 billion currently.

    The governor’s office would not provide a total amount of spending that Newsom vetoed. His boilerplate language was used in 64 vetoes.

    Neither would his spokespeople elaborate on the governor’s veto messages. Was it just about saving money? Or was that sometimes merely a cover for blocking policy he disliked?.

    “Just about every bill that is on the governor’s desk has some cost to it,” says Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Philip Ting (D-San Francisco). “Most of the time the governor has a reason other than the spending [for a veto]. Sometimes he gives the budget excuse.”

    One example: He vetoed a bill requiring high schools to provide free condoms for students. Was that just because of the “unfunded mandate” he cited? Or does the father of four children also question the policy?

    Another: He vetoed a measure that would have provided unemployment insurance benefits for striking union members. He said the unemployment fund was already $20 billion in debt. But did he also think it was nuts to subsidize strikers who voluntarily walk off their jobs?

    He vetoed a lot of spending bills that amounted to pocket change. And he was right.

    Once there’s an agreed-upon budget, lawmakers shouldn’t squeeze taxpayers for more money except in a dire emergency.

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    George Skelton

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  • Sirhan Sirhan, Man Who Killed Robert F. Kennedy, Denied Parole By California Board

    Sirhan Sirhan, Man Who Killed Robert F. Kennedy, Denied Parole By California Board

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    SAN DIEGO (AP) — A California panel on Wednesday denied parole for Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, saying the 78-year-old prisoner still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot the senator and presidential candidate in 1968.

    Sirhan’s lawyer Angela Berry disputed that, saying Sirhan has shown that awareness, and his psychiatrists have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or be a danger to society.

    Two years ago, a different California parole board had agreed with Berry, voting to release Sirhan, but Gov. Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022.

    Berry said she believes the new board members on Wednesday were influenced by Newsom and by the lawyers representing Kennedy’s widow and some of his children — several relatives of the slain politician are opposed to Sirhan’s release, though not all are.

    In rejecting Sirhan’s freedom last year, the governor said the prisoner remains a threat to the public and hasn’t taken responsibility for a crime that changed American history.

    “I do feel the board bent to the political whim of the governor,” Berry said after the hearing at a federal prison in San Diego County.

    The parole board hearing comes nearly six months after Berry asked a Los Angeles County judge to reverse Newsom’s denial. The case is ongoing, and Berry said it was unclear how Wednesday’s denial by the board will affect it.

    “They found him suitable for release last time and nothing has changed,” Berry said. “He’s continued to show great behavior.”

    In a 3 1/2-minute message played during a news conference held by Berry in September, Sirhan said he feels remorse every day for his actions. It was the first time Sirhan’s voice had been heard publicly since a televised parole hearing in 2011, before California barred audio or visual recordings of such proceedings.

    “To transform this weight into something positive, I have dedicated my life to self-improvement, the mentoring of others in prison on how to live a peaceful life that revolves around nonviolence,” he said. “By doing this, I ensure that no other person is victimized by my actions again and hopefully make an impact on others to follow.”

    Sirhan shot Kennedy moments after the U.S. senator from New York claimed victory in California’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary in 1968. He wounded five others during the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

    Sirhan originally was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972.

    He was denied parole 15 times until 2021, when the board recommended his release.

    Sirhan’s younger brother, Munir Sirhan, has said his brother can live with him in Pasadena, California, if he is paroled. Sirhan Sirhan has waived his right to fight deportation to his native Jordan.

    Berry filed a 53-page writ of habeas corpus asking the judge to rule that Newsom violated state law, which holds that inmates should be paroled unless they pose a current unreasonable public safety risk. Recent California laws also required the parole panel to consider that Sirhan committed the offense at a young age — 24 — and that he is now an older prisoner.

    She is challenging the governor’s reversal as an “abuse of discretion,” a denial of Sirhan’s constitutional right to due process and as a violation of California law. She also alleges that Newsom misstated the facts in his decision.

    Newsom’s office declined to comment.

    Newsom overruled two parole commissioners who had found that Sirhan no longer was a risk. Among other factors, Newsom said the Christian Palestinian who immigrated from Jordan has failed to disclaim violence committed in his name, adding to the risk that he could incite political unrest.

    The ruling split the Kennedy family, with RFK’s widow, Ethel Kennedy, and several of Kennedy’s nine surviving children opposing his parole.

    Sirhan’s 17th parole hearing is slated to be held in three years.

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  • ‘I consider it a win’: Jennifer Siebel Newsom on California’s women on boards law

    ‘I consider it a win’: Jennifer Siebel Newsom on California’s women on boards law

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    Is there a solution to the contentious state of U.S. politics? Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the first partner of the state of California, thinks so, but it requires more women leaders.

    “The threefold answer: focusing on our common humanity; getting more women into leadership, especially mothers and women of color; and then obviously, we’ve got to call out those who are profiting off of dividing us,” Newsom said during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif., last week.

    Gender equity has been a priority for Newsom, an award-winning filmmaker and wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom. “One of the initiatives we’ve taken on is SB 826, and making sure that this bill was implemented in a way that benefited women and represented California women,” she said. The California landmark law requires the representation of women on corporate boards of companies headquartered in the state.

    “In 2018, when SB 826 was first signed, what we found was that 15.5% of the seats on public company boards were held by women,” Newsom said. Today, 33% of public company board seats in California are held by women, she said. However, there’s still work to do. “Latinos represent 20% of the California population and are less than 2% of public company board seats,” she said.

    Along with the progress Newsom noted, there’s also been some pushback. The conservative legal group Judicial Watch challenged the law. And in May, Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis ruled the law violated the right to equal treatment.

    “Another judge gave the law a stay in September of this year,” Newsom said. “But regardless, people have moved in the direction of recognizing the value of women’s leadership.”

    “Do you consider it a win, generally speaking, regardless of what happens legally?” Fortune’s Michal Lev-Ram asked Newsom. 

    “I consider it a win,” she said. “There are so many benefits to women in leadership.” Other states are trying to implement initiatives similar to California’s SB 826, Newsom said. “But it’s important for us to lead in California on these issues,” she said.   

    California also has positioned itself as a safe haven for women from states where abortion has been banned. The state has invested more than $200 million dollars in reproductive health, Newsom said. “Part of our reproductive health care package is making sure that we don’t criminalize women for miscarriages on top of abortions, and that we don’t criminalize providers who are actually trying to protect women, whether in state or out of state,” she said. 

    “They can’t profit off of exploiting our kids any longer“

    Newsom is also focusing on the mental health of adolescents. “Increases in depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, that was already happening, but the pandemic, obviously, just pulled the curtain back on that,” she said.

    Newsom’s organization, The California Partners Project, is examining how new content and distribution technologies are affecting adolescent mental health. The goal is to clarify and communicate the warning signs and best practices around media and technology.

    The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act was signed into law by Gov. Newsom in September. The bill requires online platforms to proactively evaluate whether their product design or services, including algorithms and ads, may present a danger to minors.

    “We’re trying to slowly wake companies up to the fact that they can’t profit off of exploiting our kids any longer,” First Partner Newsom said.  

    Realizing your power

    Newsom is going to testify against Harvey Weinstein in the second trial in Los Angeles. She did not comment on the case. But Newsom shared her perspective on realizing her power. 

    “I think I first discovered my power when I made my documentary Miss Representation, Newsom said. We premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and sold [the documentary] to the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2011. I remember standing in the audience at Sundance; it was standing-room only, and a sold out audience.”

    An audience member asked, “‘So, what did you discover making this film?’” Newsom recalled. “And I said, I found my voice.” 

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    Sheryl Estrada

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